Publishers are forcing the introduction of pay-to-win balance

Independent mobile game developers are unhappy with the demands that publishers place on their projects. They say that they now require not just the introduction of free-to-play, but to optimize the balance in such a way that it was necessary to invest real money for game wins.

PocketGamer.biz He reports that several independent studios have announced pressure from publishers: today they do not even take those games that developers are ready to distribute for free.

BloodyMonkey studio told our British colleagues that all publishers refused to publish their Pablo Cavarez puzzle, motivating the refusal by the lack of virtual currency in the game, the possibility of buying hints and everything like that. The developers, in turn, saw the sale of additional mission packs as the only possible monetization model.

In an interview with Strategy Informer, Cliffhanger studio stated: publishers did not want to deal with Aerena: Clash of Champions, because they only deal with pay-to-win games. After the creative director of Cliffhanger told this publisher that pay-to-win degrades the quality of games, he was asked not to write to them anymore.

By the way, many people today consider Blizzard's new box office hit (Hearthstone) to be a game with a pay-to-win balance. But there is no hard paywall in it, which negates a possible negative experience.

And how do you look at pay-to-win in free-to-play games? Have you encountered any rejections from publishing related to the lack of full-fledged free-to-play mechanics and pay-to-win balance in your game?

A source: http://www.pocketgamer.biz/